[130] Opie also painted his first wife's portrait with that of the famous Conjuror Chamberlain. It was at one time in Sir Joshua Reynolds's Collection ('The lost Opie'), and afterwards passed into the hands of Sir Charles Bell. _THE ST. AUBYNS OF CLOWANCE AND THE MOUNT._ [Illustration: (beginning of chapter vignette.)] _THE ST. AUBYNS OF CLOWANCE AND THE MOUNT._ 'A Wit's a feather, and a Chief a rod;-- An HONEST MAN'S the noblest work of God.' POPE: _Essay on Man_. 'This gentle and knightly family,' as Hals calls them, are amongst the few examples of eminent Cornishmen who, like the Bevills, the Grenvilles, the Lanyons, the Chamonds, the Bassets, and others, were of Norman, or at least of French, origin. In the 'Chronicum Johannis Brompton' (quoted by John Henneker) we read: 'Vous que desyrez assaver Le nons de Grauntz de la mer, Que vindrent od le Conquerour, William Bastard de graunt vigoure, * * * * * Seint Aubyn, et Seynt Omer, Seynt Filbert Fyens, et Gomer.' Leland says that St. Albin came out of Brittany; and Camden, in his 'Remains,' names Plaus as the place of their origin; according, however, to other authorities, St. Aubin du Cormier in Brittany enjoys this distinction. Of Armorican extraction, they were therefore akin to Cornishmen, though abiding in 'Little Britain.' Possibly the name was not an uncommon one; and either of the two above surmises may be correct. There are now upwards of thirty French Communes into which the name of St. Aubin enters: to say nothing of the picturesque little village in Jersey of that name, which fringes the shores of St. Aubin's Bay. Their first English home seems to have been in Somersetshire; and here, in the middle of the fourteenth century, we find Guy de St. Aubyn, or Albin, settled at Alfoxton. It seems to have been he who, by his marriage with Eleanor Knoville, first obtained a footing on the Cornish soil; and, according to Tonkin, it was his grandson, Geffrey, who took up his abode at Clowance on the latter's marriage with Elizabeth Kymyell of Kymyell, the sole heir of Piers Kymyell and his wife, a daughter of--as Tonkin assures us, 'an old and notable Cornish family'--the house of Sergeaux, or Seriseaux. Their son Geffrey has a monument in Crowan church, thus inscribed: 'Hic jacent Galfridus Seynt aubyn, Et Alicia uxor ejus, filia et heres Johannes Tremure de Iaunebet, Armigeri, qui quidem Galfridus obiit tertio die mensis Octobris, Anno Domini, Mill'imo cccc^o; Alicia obiit Anno Domini Mill'imo cccc^o; quorum Animabus propicietur deus, Amen. Jhu mercy, lady help.' Since the time of the first Geffrey, the St. Aubyns, for nearly thirty descents, have dwelt at their pleasantly situated seat[131] at Clowance, 'the ancient house of an ancient gentleman,' as Norden calls it; though the present mansion dates only from the early part of the present century.